And a New Journey Has Begun

[TiasTreasures]

Welcome aboard.

Don't worry about the forums. The people here are wonderful, helpful, friendly, and literate. Be prepared for off the wall humor (and don't take it personally). There is a learning curve, so don't be afraid to ask questions if you get stuck. Someone will come along and help you out.

[iwiw60]

[darklisruthven]

Hallo there and welcome!

[Juliebabe25]

The interesting thing to me was that the OP has 4 accounts with ebay so that they can use the 50 free listings.
1 Ebay should not allow this
2 It shows that without the 50 free listings the alts would fly.

[JadeDuck]

Thanks to everyone so far who has responded. Although I have got my processes down pat on the 'bay and on eCrater, I am definitely going to need to take it slow getting started here so I don't overwhelm myself. I have one thing picked out to become my first listing here. It is an item that almost sold on eBay recently, but the buyer is refusing to pay Priority International Postage on it even though it is impossible to shrink package size down for FCI (which has no tracking anyway). Unpaid Item Case will close automatically on it tonight, so I will be free to try it here immediately after. It was this one:

(Link removed, but it was an Invader Zim Gir playset)

I'll set it up as a 7 day listing, with one auto relist. After that, it becomes one of next month's 50 free again back on the 'bay (but opening bid will be upped by $10). If no sale by then, it comes back here of course.

Once I get the feel for the listing format here, I will then start pumping out other things that for one reason or another failed to get views and bids over the months. First listing candidates, a variety of different types of items, will be the table full of stuff in the first picture here. After that, I still have a metric (or even Imperial) duckload of other stuff to try. The second picture there is just the tip of the iceberg. Back corner of the living room here has a nice neat mountain of boxes that is either prepackaged and weighed items, or unsold but already written up items that don't need prepackaging before listings. And there is another huge stack of prepackaged items in the hall closet.

After a couple weeks of getting my feet wet here, I will work on the stores. I like the idea of multiple stores for different types of items instead of the yard sale technique of "toss everything out there and hope for the best."

It is slower on here, but you can sell if you put the effort in and use the full potential of the platform.

Google is your best friend on eBid, so make sure you fully use it. Titles should include the major keywords for your product and add a full description, that way your items are more likely to get picked up and move up the Google rankings quicker. Also add brand and barcode number. If your items do not have brands or barcodes get an exemption from Google, there is a thread on how to do that and it is also in the help files.

The most popular way of listing is 7-10 days Buy It Now (BIN) with 10 auto relists. This means relisting only every 77 or 110 days but allows your listings to continually move up the eBid pages. It also keeps your store items rotating and gives fresh items on your first page if potential buyers revisit.

You can use auctions, but do not expect too many bidding wars, they are increasing but if you list an item for a cent expect it to sell for that. If you are going to use auctions then set a start price at the minimum you would happily sell for and add a BIN price so that it will be uploaded to Google.

If you are staying on eBay put a flyer in when you make sales on there informing your customers that you have items on eBid, it can help to build a customer base on here.

I am definitely expecting sales to be slow here initially. Then again, sales over there have pretty much flatlined across the board for me and many other sellers, due to them catering mostly to their pet diamond level sellers and even throwing those with TRS status under the bus.

On my auctions, I long ago got out of the habit of starting low and waiting for the bidding war which rarely ever comes. There, I start bidding at what I am comfortable with and add a BIN that may or may not seem reasonable depending on who is looking at any given time.

As for Google Shopping requirements, I have become somewhat familiar with that over on my store on another site that actually has slow but somewhat steady traffic. One thing I noticed there was that on items that were "disqualified" from Google Shopping due to not having certain specifics, like mpn, or upc, if I could not find any of those details, entering "unknown" for upc or mpn, or even concocting my own mpn in some cases seemed to work. At least they no longer show as being disqualified. I haven't done a general web search to see if that actually worked or not though. Just haven't got around to testing that out yet.

I'll do the flyer thing perhaps in a couple months after I get better established here.

Anyway, enough for now. I'll have more Qs to post later I am sure. Time to go do my shipping and shopping, then start setting up for my first listing.

[JadeDuck]

The interesting thing to me was that the OP has 4 accounts with ebay so that they can use the 50 free listings.
1 Ebay should not allow this
2 It shows that without the 50 free listings the alts would fly.

Actually, although my primary purpose for those was the additional free listings (they don't care, since they get their pound of flesh when things sell anyway), an even better reason for them to allow multiple selling accounts is for partitioning your products. After all, would you really want your account that is used to sell My Little Ponies and other kiddie stuff also associated with your goth/horror/and perhaps adult, if you sell that type of item products?

[JanetB]

Ooopsidaisy.
You need to remove the Ebay link as ecommerce links are not allowed on the eBid forum, Me pages and auction listings.

You risk getting this thread deleted.

[Gill]

Welcome to eBid JadeDuck.

I would be happier if you deleted the link to an ebay listing you had and stopped mentioning your eCrater account.

[JadeDuck]

Okay. Post fixed. Didn't even dawn on me that the link to the old listing would be verbotten since it was an ended listing or that casual mention of the other site I have.

Chalk that last one up to my underlying philosophy of "we're all in this together", and "room for everyone" as opposed to what the general trend has become lately with so many of the big names "Not enough to just win and be successful, but everyone else must fail."

And again, thanks to everyone for the warm welcome.

[JanetB]

I like the OP - he/she listens, takes notice, and applies the necessary means when requested.